Canetoad wrote: Let's see, Corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest rate in forty years. Somethings got to give and it shouldn't be the middle class.- World Begins to Heal with Taxes on Rich January 1st Dear Comrade Mr. Toad,Did I ever tell you how much I loved your Wild Ride at Disney when I was a kid?I really did.You are on to something here. Of course, you’re liberal and the fact that you have a point is accidental and unintentional. But you have made an effective case why tax rates on corporations should be...

Sometimes there is so much stupid going on in the world that you have to just stop and take stock of it all. Al Gore sells Current TV to Al Jazeera. The Americans who owned the anti-American network Current TV soon will be replaced as owners by foreigners who operate the anti-American network Al Jazeera. I doubt any of the 40,000 regular Current TV viewers would have noticed had the news not gone public. Of course, most of them spend their time writing diaries at the DailyKos, when not being yelled at by their moms to clean their rooms. But...

It took 16 hours of talks in New York on Saturday, with concessions from both sides. It took 113 days. A total of 625 regular-season games were sacrificed, or over half the 2012-13 season. It took months of bitter sniping, petty politics, false hope and broken hearts.

Threepeat: President visits same restaurants on this year's vacation as last year's... After a day of golf, President Obama on Friday night had a long, late dinner in Waikiki, spending more than 3 1/2 hours at Nobu restaurant. Joined by First Lady Obama and an unidentified group of friends, the President arrived at the "perennially hip" Waikiki Parc Hotel at 8:35 PM, home to Nobu, which bills itself as "yet another canvas for Chef Nobu Matsuhisa to display his legendary dishes." The closed-off streets around the hotel filled with excited crowds as word of the President's presence spread through Waikiki....

Duflo, who was raised in a “left-leaning Protestant” family, said she became aware of economic divides and social injustice at a very early age. “I was always conscientious of the gap between my existence and that of the world’s poor,” she told weekly French magazine l’Express in a January, 2011 article. “As a child, I was extremely troubled by the complete randomness of chance that I was born in Paris to an intellectual, middle class family, when I could have just as easily been born in Chad. It’s a question of luck. It inspired in me a sense of responsibility.”

A nineteen year old girl was arrested after accidentally killing her brother while posing with a loaded gun at around 5:30 am. The victim was identified as 22-year-old Manuel Ortiz. [snip] If the teen is found to have had alcohol in her system at the time of the shooting, she will be charged with manslaughter.

It is not the only country which has a controversial history of which it may not be entirely proud. But it seems that for French president Francois Hollande, his country's past is not something he thinks should be revisited. This week, ambitious and expensive plans for a museum about the history of France were binned because the Socialist president felt it would be too controversial. A number of academics were left delighted by the decision, because they had argued that French history is too divisive to be recounted in a museum. However, some historians have been left furious over the...

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own. In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the...

The pro-Syrian Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbar, said in its Saturday edition that Assad was ready to offer a "solution" to the deadly conflict in his speech. The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, said Assad may submit a five-point plan that would not preclude him from contesting the next presidential election when his current term ends in 2014. The plan also provides a ceasefire, allowing international observers to monitor its application, a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, forming a national government and holding free elections for a new parliament, it said.

On December 29, the owner of American Spirit Arms; Joe Sirochman relayed this chilling news via Facebook: All, My name is Joe Sirochman owner of American Spirit Arms and I wanted to share my recent experience with Bank of America .(which we have been doing business with for over 10 years)…. Everyone is familiar with the latest increase in guns sales , dealers selling out of inventory , Manufacturers back logged for months , large revenue all generated in the last two weeks …. American Spirit Arms is no exception to the overwhelming demand . What we have experienced is...

The US Army has been called in to help with the battle to salvage Royal Dutch Shell’s stricken Kulluk Arctic drilling rig, which has now been beached in environmentally delicate waters for nearly a week. The Kulluk, one of two rigs crucial to Shell’s controversial Arctic oil exploration plans, ran aground on New Year’s Eve as it was hit by a fierce storm while being towed to Seattle for maintenance. Two Chinook helicopters from the 16th Combat Aviation Brigade flew to the scene on Friday to help transport heavy equipment for the salvage operations. Three vessels are on site and...

Please say a Prayer for my mother. I don't think I've ever asked some one to pray for some one else before, but she's in a tough spot. If it is her time to go it will hurt terribly, but as Catholics and the fact that she is the most caring, loving person I have ever met, I know we will meet again in a better place. I'm also extremely upset with the hospital, and I don't want this to happen to others. On the day after Christmas, my mother was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with Pneumonia. They...

<p>The Pakistani military is accusing forces from neighboring India of crossing the boundary between the two sides' forces in Kashmir and attacking a Pakistani border post, killing a soldier.</p>
<p>The military's public relations office said in a statement Sunday that another Pakistani soldier was critically wounded in the incident early Sunday.</p>

Americans around the nation were shocked Friday as they heard about H.J.Res. 15. H.J.Res 15 proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment. This would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. Rep. José Serrano (D- NY15) introduced the controversial joint resolution on Friday, the second day of the 2013 legislative session.

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions. A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has been forced to recalibrate his election campaign in response to a downward spiral in opinion polls due to a surprise challenge from an ultra-nationalist startup millionaire and veteran of Israel's most elite commando unit. New tactics are expected to be in evidence on Sunday when Netanyahu appears at a youth rally, following the panicked cancellation of an event on Thursday after dismal turnouts at two campaign rallies earlier in the week. On the advice of his campaign strategist, US Republican adviser Arthur Finkelstein, the prime minister will stop making direct attacks on Naftali Bennett,...

The intentions of the Journal News’ editorial board in publishing a highly controversial “interactive gun map” are further occluded by an inconvenient fact. According to Rockland County Clerk Paul Piperato, in Rockland County a large number of the names and addresses on the map are not even correct. Piperato said, “I’d figure about 25 percent of the addresses are not accurate.” He explained that when persons change their address or pass away it is supposed to be reported to the County Clerk’s office, but the county has no means to vigorously enforce this regulation. Thus pistol permit and other permit...

This is the statement he made I am referring to: Addressing Feinstein directly, Mr. Boston, who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, says he'll refuse to register his weapons and writes, "You ma'am have overstepped a line that is not your domain." "I am not your subject," he continues. "I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant."

In 1920, Detroit was the fourth biggest city in America. Its population had doubled in a decade. Migrants, many of them African-Americans from the rural South, were drawn by its pioneering car factories with their unprecedentedly high wages. The manic, mechanised, overcrowded metropolis of General Motors and Ford also drew journalists and writers. In 1934, Anne O'Hare McCormick of the New York Times wrote about Detroit's "democratized luxuries, with gas stations on every corner, chain stores, moving-picture palaces … as truly a world capital as any city on earth … Paris dictates a season's silhouette, but Detroit manufactures a pattern...